"What are the hottest tickets in London theatre?" asks Michael Billington in today's Guardian. "Patrick Stewart's Macbeth, Ian McKellen's Lear and what will now be known as Chiwetel Ejiofor's Othello." Amid news of astronomically priced tickets on eBay (£1,200 a pair, anyone?), Michael Grandage's Othello has won a rapturous reception in today's reviews. Critics seem to agree that it's one of the productions of the year - and that Ejiofor is one of the best Othellos in recent times.

While Stewart's Macbeth dazzled critics with its Stalinist overtones, Grandage's production has been praised for what Billington calls its "refreshingly classical" stance. "Much as I've enjoyed radical takes on Othello," he writes, "it is good to see the play restored to its 17th-century origins." In the Independent, Paul Taylor celebrated an "extraordinarily fresh and new-minted production" and claimed that its strength lay in the fact that "nothing in this familiar tragedy feels like a foregone conclusion".

For Taylor, the performances offered a striking new perspective on familiar characters. As Othello and Iago respectively, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor "go against the grain of current notions of how these roles should be played and ... furnish us with new insights into the hero's downfall". The Evening Standard's Nicholas de Jongh praised Ejiofor's "extraordinary and historic" performance: "Ejiofor's bearded, African-sounding, very Christian Moor, whose charismatic eyes dominate the stage, never basks in the military self-importance of conventional Othellos." (He included a caveat, though: "Ejiofor has difficulty weeping - and Othello is famously tearful".) In the Times, Benedict Nightingale was glad that Ejiofor "wasn't one of those oversized generals who majestically roar, but a slim, lithe, very human Moor". For Michael Billington, Ejiofor's performance, "in its descent from majestic dignity to deluded rage, suggests a great and noble building being destroyed by the wrecker's ball".

What of Ewan McGregor, who last trod the London boards in Guys and Dolls? Benedict Nightingale, dwelling perhaps a little too long on McGregor's recent round-the-world adventures for the BBC, wrote: "He has, so to speak, taken command of the handlebars or joystick of the role and steered his way through it with the macho assurance of an Evel Knievel or a Red Arrow pilot." Other critics found more familiar points of comparison. For de Jongh, McGregor "has none of the ingratiating deference or chilling inscrutability of Ian McKellen's definitive Iago". For Billington, "McGregor gives a decent, robust, if insufficiently complex, account ... I never felt the actor gave us privileged access to what Hazlitt called the man's 'diseased intellectual activity.'"

There was general praise for the production's Desdemona - Kelly Reilly, who last year essayed Julie Christie's role in BBC Four's A for Andromeda remake. "She gives us the character's social bravery and loving nature but what I shall long remember is her vulnerability," wrote Michael Billington. Benedict Nightingale found Reilly's Desdemona "a touchy-feely girl who sinuously yet unselfconsciously exudes sexuality".

An "Othello of the first rank" then (that was our headline) - or "a jolly good Othello" (that was the Evening Standard's). But before you think about re-mortgaging the house to snap up some eBay tickets, you should know that the Donmar is releasing ten tickets a day for early birds at the theatre's box office.